This invention generally relates to parking vehicles, and more specifically, to allocating parking spaces to vehicles.
Automobiles and other vehicles are widely used to transport people and cargo. Indeed, many people live and work in places that, as a practical matter, are accessible only by car and other motor vehicles. Due to the very widespread use of vehicles, parking is needed for vehicles at many places where people may go to visit or to work, such as office building, entertainment venues, schools, businesses, shopping malls and airports. Parking is generally provided at these places in the form of a parking area or parking garage. Some streets also have parking areas, typically in the form of parking spaces along the sides of the streets. These parking facilities can be of varying sizes, ranging from a few parking spaces to thousands of spaces.
Parking facilities typically use space very inefficiently. Almost all of these facilities are designed to accommodate many types of vehicles and many vehicle sizes. Usually, most parking spaces in a facility are designed to accommodate the largest vehicle that, as a practical matter, would use that space. As a result, much space is wasted when smaller vehicles are parked in the parking spaces.
A parking lot may be defined as a set of parking spaces. A parking space, usually a rectangle, has a length and a breadth. At present, the length and breadth are fixed for all parking spaces inside a particular parking facility. This is true for virtually all parking facilities.
There are significant problems of such a concept. One important problem is that car sizes are non-standard, while parking spaces are all of the same size inside a particular parking lot. Also, large cars have a tight fit parking, while smaller cars have a lot of empty space around them which is usually wasted. Another problem is that a parking lot is declared full when all parking spaces are occupied, even when there are wasted empty spaces.
The inefficient use of parking facilities results in cost overhead to two parties—the parking lot owner loses revenue, and the car driver has to look for alternate space which indirectly causes a loss of fuel and time. Pollution increases due to traffic congestion in multiple parking lots, where a single parking lot could have been a solution. Also, more city/town area is wasted in parking lots, when this area could be utilized for other purposes, such as a park or for recreation.